


fire exists the first in light

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Avatar the Last Airbender AU, Ba Sing Se, Do NOT copy to another website, F/M, Fight Scenes, Firebending & Firebenders, Humor, Jyn Erso Appreciation Week, Mostly Jyn-centric, Prompt: Fire, Pursuit, Waterbending & Waterbenders, and of course cabbages, more like the seeds of shipping, very vague background shipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24284110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: The fire bursts from her body in a great spike of roaring flames, the heat stoked so high that the edges burn blue with it. The spike doesn’t evaporate the wave, but it slices through the center – Jyn can feel the moment the waterbender’s pull on the water wavers and splits, the weight and momentum slipping from his control and sending the two smaller waves crashing to the ground on either side of her.--Jyn Erso has been hunted her whole life. She will not be taken.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 42
Kudos: 124





	fire exists the first in light

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Jyn Appreciation Week, Day 2: Fire.
> 
> I tagged it as rebelcaptain because I have some ideas for continuing it, and if I get to them, then this will definitely turn down that road. In the meantime, there are only hints of future rebelcaptain here, and it is mostly centered around Jyn and her fire.

Jyn knows she’s been in Ba Sing Se too long. _A stagnant flame soon burns itself out_ , Saw growls in her memory, and while Jyn hates to admit it, her old mentor was right. He may not have been the best caretaker in the end (or she wasn’t a good enough child, she’s not sure, she never got to ask), but he was a consummate survivor and he made sure she was, too. She’s been in Ba Sing Se for almost a full turning of the moon, and her instincts have been howling at her to leave it behind for at least half that time. The biggest, most powerful city in the Earth Kingdom is no place for a firebender at the best of times, and this? This is not the best of times.

So the problem isn’t that she doesn’t agree with Saw’s assessment, nor that she isn’t itching to get out of this city and back on the road to…wherever comes next. The problem is that getting into Ba Sing Se is easy enough, the trade routes and market-bound convoys from the Agrarian Zone funnel people along the monorail system directly into the prosperous Middle and wealthy Upper Rings of the city. Even the Lower Ring, where Jyn has been skulking for weeks, has it’s fair share of large inbound travel groups and merchant trains.

But getting out again…..well. This city, Jyn has discovered a little too late, has a surprisingly strict and unsettlingly well-enforced series of laws regarding exports, “cultural, agrarian, and educational.” Searches on goods and people coming _in_ are generally perfunctory and easily avoided with the right bribes and favors; searches on people and goods going _out_ are thorough and unforgiving. Especially, for some reason, books and scrolls.

Not that she cares, but Jyn figures someone powerful doesn’t want the ‘wrong’ sort of information – or people - getting out of Ba Sing Se.

Unfortunately, Jyn Erso is definitely one of the ‘wrong’ sort of people. The first time she tried to slip onto a monorail bound for the Outer Wall, she’d nearly been picked up in a random sweep of green-uniformed men who wore no identifiable badges, but moved like Earthbenders and were obeyed like royal guards. She’s not going to risk that again, but the only other option that she’s found is to somehow get through the massive stone main gates that seal each Ring of the city, including the impenetrable Inner Wall. She’s caged, _like a flame to a candle wick_ , Saw would grumble were he present and not raising hell in Crescent Island (or so she’s heard). Jyn rolls her eyes irritably.

It’s a mistake; the shopkeeper of Hammerstone Blades frowns at her, probably assuming her derisive expression is aimed at the _bonguk geom_ she is examining, not her own internal demons. Jyn hurriedly wipes the anger from her face, or tries to, but it’s too late, she can already tell that the shopkeeper thinks she has poor taste in blades not to recognize the superb craftsmanship of the geom she is looking at. Hammerstone is a lesser known forge, but it’s one of the best in the Lower Ring and possibly the Middle Ring, too. The shopkeeper is not the mastersmith himself, but he’s likely to be married to her, or at least related. He will take Jyn's implied insult personally, and make the price way too high for her even bother bargaining.

Not that she could have afforded the beautifully-balanced short sword anyway. Vagrant former rebels don’t tend to amass fortunes.

Still, she’d enjoyed dreaming a little. She had lost her off-hand _jian_ years ago, in the battlefield where Saw abandoned – well, she’d lost it, and her main-hand _jian_ never felt quite as good without it’s partner. The _bonguk geom_ wasn’t exactly the same proportions or weight as her _jian_ , but it came close enough that she could adapt.

The shopkeeper is now eyeing her with distaste, his assessing gaze flicking over her features in a way that makes her belly twist and her skin flush with heat. The sensation is dangerously close to how it feels just before she calls up the flames of her bending into blazing life, and she doesn’t like this level of scrutiny anyway. So Jyn gives up on even the faint daydream of buying a new sword and pulls her scarf up around her head as she ducks out of Hammerstone. The blue crystal lamp next to the shop entrance that signals their license to make and sell weaponry swings in the evening breeze, glinting in the golden sunset. The movement draws Jyn’s eye up, though by now she ought to be used to the decorative crystals hung or embedded all over the city famous for mining them. It’s lucky for her that she does look up, though, because just past the glittering faceted stone she sees –

It’s only for a moment, and he pulls back before she gets a good look at him, but there’s a man perched on the roof of Hammerstone, watching her.

Jyn’s guts freeze, and then the heat is flushing through her skin again, Saw’s voice snapping in the back of her mind, _go, now! Swift as flame through forest, run!_

She doesn’t run. She can’t, not when the crowds are already thinning out. Running will make her even more visible to the man on the roof, besides drawing additional attention from who knew what others.

Jyn ties her scarf tighter under her chin and wills her blood to cool. Breathes in, steady, slow, out, steady, slow. No fire. No running.

She risks a glance up, and thinks she glimpses a shadow darting across the gap between Hammerstone’s roof and the adjacent jeweler’s shop. But in the rapidly growing darkness, she might be mistaken.

Her guts tell her that she isn’t mistaken.

She’s _definitely_ been in this city too long.

Jyn paces as casually as she can manage through the dwindling crowds. There are still enough people that she can hope to lose a pursuer among them, but not enough to make it easy. And certainly not if he’s following her from such a vantage point. Jyn needs to do something about that.

The answer is a few streets further southwest, which luckily is more or less the way she needs to go to get off the streets before the local night patrols begin. Jyn pretends as long as she can that she means to pass by the long, winding road that passes through the Yuja Tea Market, but at the last second, she turns on her heel and darts under the stone arch covered in a mosaic of green and yellow crystal chips. The soothing fragrances of a thousand different tea blends envelops her quickly, but she’s more interested in the architecture of Yuja Tea Market’s main street. It’s an older district of the Lower Ring, and the muddy street is lined with traditional single-story buildings capped with sharply-ridged roofs. If her pursuer stays up there, he will either have to dart constantly behind the tall ridges of the green-slate roofs, giving her a chance to escape his sight, or he will have to run in front of the ridges, where the lights mounted along the roof edges will outline him against the polished tiles.

It doesn’t even occur to her that the slippery roof tiles might be too difficult for her pursuer to traverse regardless of architecture. The only kind of people who have ever chased Jyn Erso have been the kind of people who train for movement over difficult terrain.

They also tend to be the kind of people who train to kill.

Jyn pauses near a glass tea shop window and pretends to examine the bunches of hanging leaves and little signs proclaiming them fresh from the Agrarian Zone, angling her head to see the faint reflection of the street behind her. There! A man-sized shadow drops from the sharply-sloped roof directly behind her, and then vanishes into the crowd. He might know she’s on to him, he might not; either way, he’s not willing to force a confrontation yet. Perhaps he’s worried about collateral damage (in which case, he’s probably not from her home nation, and not a bounty hunter nor a contract killer). Perhaps he’s concerned about drawing the attention of Ba Sing Se’s powerful law enforcers (in which case, he might very well be a firebender after all, one of the smarter ones, her father’s jailors come to capture her at last).

Jyn nods to the glass. Whatever he wants with her, she’s not going to go quietly.

Belatedly, it occurs to her that there might be more than one of them. Well, nothing she can do about that at the moment.

Jyn walks through the Yuja Tea Market as quickly as she dares without running, fighting to keep herself from glancing back over her shoulder or otherwise making it obvious that she knows she’s being pursued. There’s still a chance he thinks she’s unaware of him, which will give her a slim advantage. She makes good use of the crowd, darting forward through small gaps that close behind her, making a point of crossing the street to pass through a thick cloud of fragrant steam that boils out of a popular tea shop boiling something that smells like jasmine and orange. She doesn’t risk looking around for her shadow until she reaches the far end of the market road, passing under the last green-studded arch out of Yuja Tea Market and into the Gardens of Bounty.

He steps back around the corner just as her eye catches him, but not before she marks his narrow features, the lock of dark hair that falls out from under his broad-brimmed hat to his forehead, and the thin line of his lips. It’s the same face she glimpsed above Hammerstone. Even the weight of his dark eyes feels the same on the back of her neck. Saw would shake his head to hear such a fanciful idea, but Saw isn’t here and Jyn doesn’t have time to argue with him anyway. The need to _run_ crackles through her, smoldering under her skin.

No, no running. Walk fast but not hurried. Scarf tight but head high. Not afraid. _Never let them see the fear, my child_. _Never let them own your heart in such a way._

The Gardens of Bounty is one of the nicer produce and meat markets in the Lower Ring. The roads are still packed dirt rather than cobbled stone like the upper rings, and the pink and green crystals hung like talismans from every shop door and embedded in every stone arch are mere slivers rather than the large faceted gems she’s heard they use up in the wealthy areas. However, those same streets are wide and well-swept, and small stone-ringed flower beds grow in pleasant patterns all throughout the market area and in front of the larger shops. Several of the mobile produce stands that roll in here during the day have also managed to coax small batches of flowers or plants from the little sunroofs over their wares. As the produce stands roll around the Gardens, the colorful flowers bob merrily in time with the wheels, the carrot tops and radish leaves wave little green fronds, and is that a row of cabbages precariously perched on the nearest stand? Strange. Jyn sees an opportunity to lose her pursuer, and times another quick step between the cabbage salesman and a cart loaded with squawking turkey-ducks. The ostrich-horse hauling the cart screeches in startled protest at her sudden closeness, rearing and slamming the cart backwards. There’s an angry shout from the farmer driving the cart, the crunch of wood against wood, the wet slapping sound of vegetables plopping into the mud ( _my cabbages_ , wails a distressed merchant), and then the cacophony of multiple people shouting over the furious honks of disgruntled turkey-ducks.

Jyn smirks at the thoroughly blocked street behind her and sidles towards the nearest alley. It’s narrow and piled with garbage from the shops on either side, waiting for the city service to come and haul it away after the Gardens close for the night. If she’s not mistaken, this particular alley will lead her towards one of the many quarries in this part of the Lower Ring. The quarries around here are all crowded with various equipment and discarded rock, giant stone transportation bins and smaller versions of the big monorail to move the hauls around. No crowds to hide in, but endless opportunity to hide. In the worst-case scenario, she can even risk running down into one of the labyrinthine mining tunnels that supposedly run all under the city. Not her favorite plan, but at least there would be plenty of places to hide down there. Unless her pursuer is an earthbender…

Shit, _is_ he an earthbender?

She’s still trying to drag up her brief memories of the man, parsing through the flashes of movement and what little she can remember of his clothes to see if she recognizes anything that will help her identify him when a shadow falls across her back, filling the alleyway behind her.

Jyn whirls, and there he is, slipping into the alleyway and standing as still as stone behind her. He doesn’t advance, doesn’t call out to her. But when he lifts his chin and peers at her from under the brim of his hat, any doubt that he is here for her vanishes from Jyn’s mind. He carries no visible weapons, takes no bending stance, and he’s not much older than her – but his eyes flick across her body, notes the way her fingers flex, the way her body shifts as she draws in a deep breath, and finally he looks directly into her eyes and she realizes that he knows not only who she is, but _what_.

The heat floods under her skin again, burns in her chest and pulses behind her eyes. _Burn him_ , Saw orders, _burn him and run, whether he is a bender or a fighter or neither at all, he is the most dangerous person in this city. He knows you. Run!_

Jyn breathes in. Sparks burn in her lungs, tiny points of golden light in her chest, _alive, alive, I’m alive, I will not be taken, I will not be held_ , and then she spins on her heel and spits the fire, a wordless roar that lashes across the narrow confines of the alleyway. The stranger shies back, hands raised, but her flame does not strike across his exposed hands. It splashes against the piles of refuse between them, turning them both to blazing bonfires in an instant. Jyn spins back around on her heel in nearly the same motion, and sprints down the alley. Behind her, she feels the faint sense of the flames she’s called into being from her own breath…and then the air seems to change, turn vaguely humid, and Jyn has half a second’s worth of warning before she sees the water rising from the rain barrel placed just ahead of her. The water swirls up from the barrel and flies at her in an unnatural gush – she throws herself into a forward roll at the last breath and feels the water slice overhead a mere handspan from her neck, and then there is the hiss of water striking fire, and the cloying scent of steaming garbage billowing up from behind.

Jyn doesn’t look back, simply completes the forward roll back to her feet and now she’s flying down the alley because shit, _shit_ , he’s a _waterbender_ and if she doesn’t get away right the hell now then she is – he might – _why_ is he –

There has never been a good reason for a waterbender to pursue a firebender. And this one _knows_ her.

Jyn skids around the final corner and bursts into the open streets again. Without slowing, she makes a rapid assessment. This is one of the residential streets surrounding the Gardens of Bounty. The crowds are thinned to only a few handfuls of people hurrying on their way home, the last rays of sunlight now only shining on the rooftops nearby and the shadows deepening to purple on the ground. The nearest quarry is to the south. She turns towards it.

Another water barrel erupts in front of her, long whip-like tendrils lashing out of the wooden slats towards her. Jyn snarls and dodges back, stopping herself from lashing back with fire whips of her own. The alleyway was one thing, but if she starts firebending out in the middle of even a low-traffic street, she will be hunted through this city like an animal.

Hunted like an animal _by more than one person_ , she mentally corrects as she darts across the street instead of down it, intent on running into the far alleyway and trying to cut west around the main streets. A crackling sound, not unlike the sound of sparklers dropped into open flame, but Jyn knows the difference. She doesn’t have to turn and look to know that the water from the barrel has snap-frozen, probably into something unpleasant like sharp spikes. She snatches a nearby signpost, kicking out the base of the pole with a precise strike and raising it defensively before her chest as she turns to face the attack.

Four solid spikes of ice thud into the wood at once. A fifth spike wings just over her left shoulder, close enough that she can feel the chill of it against her neck. A tug on her scarf – the fifth spike had caught the edge of the fabric and ripped it down from her head. Her hair and face are exposed now, the scarf trailing awkwardly down her back.

She has just enough time to register that none of the spikes would have buried themselves in her vital organs if they had hit. They would, most likely, have torn through the loose edges of her peasant’s shift and scarf, and either pinned her to the alley wall or perhaps melted and reformed into something even more unpleasant. Something like chains of ice, or even a solid block of it around her whole body.

He’s not trying to kill her. He’s trying to _catch_ her.

The panic ignites the heat in her lungs and belly like oil on a campfire.

She will _not_ be taken.

She turns the wooden sign sideways and flings it across the street at the man who now stands with his hands outstretched towards her, his stillness traded for fluid motions that beckon towards the icy spikes. Even as Jyn sends the wooden sign whirling towards him, the ice shifts in obedience to his flowing gestures, and reforms into the whiplike tendrils. Jyn tries to run south again, a desperate lunge for the relative safety of the quarries ( _boy!_ an old man quavers somewhere down the street, _what do you think you are doing to that young lady, boy? I’ll put you over my knee, I will, don’t think I won’t!)_

The water whips surge up from the street in front of her, cracking as they flail towards her face and drive her back again. She dances away from the sharp frozen edges of the whips, her breath burns in her lungs and throat but she can’t call it out, can’t turn and launch herself at that narrow, focused face, can’t spit fire into those dark, knowing eyes. Not here, not as more and more locals come to their doors and windows to peer out at the battle unfolding in the deepening twilight. In the dim light, Jyn’s fire would burn bright enough for the entire neighborhood to see.

She glances back at the alley she had meant to escape down before, but the fifth ice spike is still embedded in the wall there, and at that exact moment it melts and stretches out, refreezing into a thin sheet of ice stretched across the opening. The only way through is either to melt it with her flame or smash her body through it – either way, it stinks of a trap. ( _Da, leave it, it’s not our business_ , says a distant worried voice.)

Across the street, the waterbender stands quietly again, but this time he stays half-crouched into a bending pose she doesn’t recognize but reads as defensive to her experienced eye. He is waiting to see what she will do. ( _In my day, we didn’t stand about watching ruffians pick on girls! Stand aside, sonny, I’ll put him over my knee!_ )

For a brief moment, she debates dropping her own wary stance. There are enough eyes on them now, and from their point of view this is clearly a man chasing a frightened woman through their home. She can bury her face in her shaking hands, maybe call up some fake tears if she digs deep. Beg for help. He’s not much older than her, but he’s certainly taller, his chin covered with rough stubble that marks him an outsider from the mostly smooth-faced Earth Kingdom peasants. Even in the fading light, his skin is distinctly darker than the locals, and his sharp jawline and nose are uncommon in this part of the world. He wouldn’t draw a glance among the traders and merchants. But here in the residential areas, especially now that he’s marked himself as a waterbender, all his small differences are startling in comparison to Jyn’s relatively small form and harmless appearance.

Her thoughts must play out across her face, or perhaps the same idea occurs to him at the same moment, because she sees him sweep an assessing eye around the street before looking back to her. His mouth tightens, his fingers curl slightly, and the threatening water whips abruptly splash into the dirt as he drops them. He doesn’t move out of his stance, but he also no longer looks quite so aggressive in comparison to her. ( _Look, Da, it’s fine, just go inside, please. Think of your hip._ )

A small group of middle-aged women murmur among themselves to her right, their disapproval obvious as they glare across the street at the waterbender interrupting their calm little world. He glances at them, jaw grim, a stiffness creeping into his otherwise smooth stance. She could do it. She could throw him to the locals, let them run for the enforcers. Let this dangerous man with water in his veins and ice in his eyes deal with a pack of trained earthbender enforcers and righteous old folk. ( _Don’t patronize me, boy, I fought bandits and firebenders before you were knee high to a croco-cat!_ )

She shifts her weight, and for a breathless moment she almost does it, almost weeps into her hands and hunches her shoulders and lets the people gathered around them step in. But then the waterbender shakes his head, a tiny movement, he might have been merely shaking that loose lock of hair back from his forehead, but Jyn is still watching his eyes and she understands the message. _Don’t_.

And then, a small dip of his chin, his mouth twists just slightly at the corners, the shift in his expression subtle but…pained.

 _Please_ , she reads in his face. _Please. Don’t_.

If she involves these people, she has no idea what he will do to them to get to her.

But _he_ does. And he’s asking her not to make him choose.

 _Dangerous,_ Saw murmurs in her ear as her fire burns and burns in her throat. _Far too dangerous._

Jyn takes a deep breath.

And runs.

She slams through the middle-aged women to her right, causing them to shout with surprise and anger, and then she is running northward, as fast as her legs will carry her up the street to the right, away from the quarry but she’ll find another way. She has one last trick, a faint hope that might just be enough to free her of her pursuer.

She hears the snap of water freezing behind her again, but the unsettled noise of the crowd doesn’t shift into screams so she can only assume that whatever he did, he at least didn’t hurt any of them.

She bolts up the street and swerves wildly to the right, then left, darting through a major crossroad, thankful for the first time that the streets are now almost entirely empty in this part of the Lower Ring, all the workers and shopkeeps gone home or to the eateries in the nicer parts of the Ring. Another arch gleams in the newly-lit streetlamps ( _dance with us,_ sing the flames from their translucent stone lamps, singing to her blood as she races past _, dance with us, breathe in and out and burn away the darkness, let us shine against the night_ ), several branching paths lined with glittering lamps wind through a park of some kind. Jyn veers towards it, under the arch covered in shards of pink and white quartz and down the nearest lamp-lined path ( _dance with us, dance_ , call the flames inside their crystal cages, _breathe us in, burn away the dark, burn away the fear_ ). Behind her, she can hear the pounding of boots against the packed dirt street, only one pursuer still, but if she doesn’t get away, there will be more. There are always more. She has to lose him. Whoever he is, whatever else he knows, however little he wants to hurt the innocent people caught in their crossfire, she _will not_ be taken.

The path curves away to the west, and even in the darkening gloom she can still make out the vast stretch of the Inner Wall ahead of her. Good. She’s going the right way, and if she stays far enough ahead of him perhaps she can lead him straight into the –

The lamp next to her flickers too high, light fracturing into odd patterns that catch her eye. Jyn snarls and throws herself to the ground again as she realizes that it is not lamp light but the fractal reflection of the light on a rising wall of water.

The wave rolls narrowly past her ankle as she twists away, then another surges up from the shadows in the same direction. Jyn dodges again, the fire singing in her veins and surging in her chest, pushing against her control, _danger, danger, breathe, dance, burn!_ It’s a fountain, she’s passing a large decorative fountain and the waterbender is calling dark rolling waves up from the stone basin. Another wave bursts up from her left, a third from up ahead and to the right. Jyn leaps and whirls desperately, first one direction than another. This can’t all be coming from one fountain, how is he - oh, oh no, has she stumbled into, what was it called? The Songs of Rain? She’s heard of it but never walked through, a park memorializing the old treaties between the Earth Kingdom and the long-fallen United Nation of Water Tribes. The place is said to be absolutely covered in fountains and little artificial creeks, a waterbender's playground. Surely she can’t have been that big of a fool. As another surge of dark water rolls menacingly towards her, carrying the faint chill of ice and the threat of capture, she knows that she _has_. No wonder he wouldn’t let her run south, but did nothing to stop her from fleeing to the north. He knew she was running directly into a water park.

Over the carefully cultured trees of the park, as if to add insult to impending injury, a full moon begins to rise.

Jyn grits her teeth and leaps over the edge of the nearest fountain basin. Her boots slip on the wet stone, but Jyn is light and fast and she will not be taken, and before the water can roll back into the fountain and sweep her along with it, she leaps again. She exhales as she pushes off into the air, not enough to unleash the fire stoked inside her lungs but enough for comforting heat to rush down and behind, pushing her farther, faster, almost flying for one bright, safe moment before gravity catches up and she crashes back to the muddy path below.

Cold, wet darkness rises behind her, a crushing wave larger than the others, or perhaps it _is_ the others, all of the water he’s pulled from the many fountains surrounding her and summoned into one great terrible wave meant to smash her to the ground and freeze her blood until she is little more than a limp, helpless puddle at his feet. She closes her eyes, braced for the blow, for the cold, for the dark (she has been there before, alone and helpless and blind as she waits and waits and waits for someone to come)

No.

_No._

_She will not be taken_.

Jyn inhales, turns to face the great wave as it bears down on her, the lamp light so scattered and lost in the rippling darkness that it appears to have been swallowed-

\- and exhales.

The fire bursts from her body in a great spike of roaring flames, the heat stoked so high that the edges burn blue with it. The spike doesn’t evaporate the wave, but it slices through the center – Jyn can feel the moment the waterbender’s pull on the water shivers and splits, the weight and momentum slipping from his control and sending the two smaller waves crashing to the ground on either side of her. In the daylight, in the sun, Jyn knows her flame spike should have evaporated a larger portion of that wave, perhaps broken his hold over it completely, but it is night and the full moon rises overhead, and worse, he is _good_ , this waterbender, this dangerous stranger who knows her. Even as she breaks his control over the great wave, he is already pushing the new waves back together behind her, pulling them to rise again, diminished but not harmless. She can’t stay here. Even if the playing field were more even, she can feel the precision in his control, the speed at which he adapts to her new aggressive stance.

As the water parts, she catches sight of him again. He’s lost his wide brimmed hat, and dark hair falls around his face in an unkempt mess. His clothes are rumpled and sweaty now, too, evidence of his hard run through the streets in her wake. With his scruffy beard and mud-splattered boots, he looks like a bandit from the roads outside Ba Sing Se. But whatever his appearance, his movements are perfectly controlled, his breath appears even and measured, and his eyes are intent. He is not even remotely finished chasing her.

Jyn spits a concentrated stream of liquid fire at his face, forcing him to pull a watery shield between them, cutting off that piercing expression. He knows her, he knows who she is _, dangerous, you stayed too long, child, you must run, run, run!_

A scream somewhere nearby; a group of locals have stumbled into the park and across their battlefield, and now they watch in horror as Jyn flicks her wrists and sends a thin whorl of fire whipping through the base of the wave, cutting it at the root and temporarily sending it crashing down in the wrong direction. She’s done it twice now, but it won’t work again, the waterbender has already adapted, splitting the great wave back into several swirling whirlpools that rise from the ground like chilling miniature tornadoes, circling her.

The tension in his face when she nearly involved civilians…

Jyn breathes deep, and finally answers the call of the flickering crystal lamps, singing out to them in the same silent tongue. The air cracks with the sound of a dozen crystal panes shattering at once as the fragile candle flames all along the nearest paths blossom into raging bonfires barely contained to the wooden posts that they now consume. One lamp is right next to the waterbender; Jyn sees him flinch as fine shards of crystal lance across his forehead and draw lines of dark blood. The whirlpools wobble, not collapsing (he really is good) but no longer moving, barely held together as the waterbender blinks against the sudden flood of light and blood in his eyes. The locals’ frightened shouts turn to terrified screams as they cower, surrounded by what look like monstrous torches. One of the perfectly manicured trees rustles and creaks as leaping flames catch the lower boughs.

Across water and fire and muddy earth, Jyn meets the waterbender’s dark eyes again. She tries to catch the guilt that flashes through her and keep it off her face, but she doubts that she pulls it off. Still, she didn’t start this fight, and she won’t be his helpless prisoner. So Jyn glares at him, daring him to judge her, and jerks her chin at the quivering civilians. _Your move_ , she thinks, and doesn’t wait to see his answer.

The nearest whirlpool evaporates around her burning fist, and Jyn plunges down the path to the west. Behind her, she can hear the hiss of steam as water douses at least one fire, but she knows better than to think he will be long delayed undoing the damage she’s done. He won’t bother to put out all the fires, only the ones directly threatening the locals.

She’s almost sure he will do that, at least.

In the distance, alarm bells ring, deep and resonant, making the earth beneath her feet tremble. Damn. Enforcers. She needs to _hide._

Back on the main streets, westbound towards the Inner Wall and her one sanctuary, Jyn spots an oddly-shaped boulder sitting on the side of the street between two large walled compounds. Oh, good, she knows this place. The Giant’s Walkway, a wide, partially cobbled street housing many schools for young earthbenders too poor to pay for tuition in the higher rings. It's called The Giant’s Walkway because of all the big potholes and poorly balanced boulders that got thrown around here and often left unattended by students. Jyn doesn't slow her pace, but she does pay more attention to where she sets her feet; this would be a bad time for a sprained ankle. She can even see some places in the compound walls where cracks or straight-out _holes_ have been left by awkward student earthbenders losing control of stones bigger than they can yet handle. Most of the holes have not been patched, either. Earthbending instructors tend to be more like Saw than Jyn is comfortable admitting – if a student makes a mess, the student repairs the damage, even if it takes days.

One such hole is still obviously frustrating it’s repairman just to her left. The sign over the nearby gate claims this is the Carnelian Academy, which accounts for the reddish orange color of the walls. They are not crystalline carnelian though, but some kind of gritty red sandstone, and to the side of the gate is a large crack just big enough for Jyn to squeeze through, the sandy red stone crumbling away at her touch as she pushes through it. The student who probably smashed the wall has clearly been trying to pack the hole with smaller red stones and then pressure-force them into a smooth surface again, but hasn’t mastered anything near that level of control. Jyn doesn’t even have to firebend to break away the few chunks of stone that would have stopped her from passing.

The bells tolls again to the east, but no shouting pursuit seems to have followed her down this way. Jyn dares to hope that she’s shaken the waterbender, at least.

She’s halfway across the school’s outer courtyard, weaving through scattered boulders and treacherous sandy pits that seemed designed to catch the unwary ankle when something hisses behind her.

Jyn breathes, and pushes. Twin lances of fire burst from her fists, twining around each other as they fly through the air in a delicate arc. The combined streams of fire flare as they meet, flashing from red to white for an instant of focused heat. The power of it burns through the wall of snow that has grown from seemingly nowhere before her, turning it back to water and then steam almost too fast for the eye to follow. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the dark shadow running along the top of the red stone wall, his hands sweeping through the air even as he sprints to catch up to her.

She inhales (ignores the faint wheeze at the end of the breath, oh gods she’s getting tired, and _he_ has a full moon glowing overhead) and wings a fireball towards the wall just ahead of him. It bursts against the stone just as he reaches the spot, but he’s seen it coming and thrown a smothering wave of water ahead of himself, snuffing her shot before it has the chance to even singe his robes.

The gate on the far side of the courtyard is closed and barred, and no convenient holes mar this side of the compound wall. Jyn curses her ill luck; she had hoped that she would at least have the necessary few seconds required to unbar the gate to get out. But the waterbender is drawing closer, and she can feel another pull of energy from somewhere behind her - it seems the school has a well or a small pond, something big enough that she’ll never stand against him if he reaches her with whatever weapon he’s amassing.

So Jyn inhales (and then inhales again, her chest beginning to burn in a different way now), and lashes out the moment she is within range. The thick gate explodes outward in fragments of smoldering wood and heat-warped metal hinges, and Jyn hears the smack and hiss of cold water against the hot stone mere moments after she scrambles through and out into the dark street beyond. She's getting sloppy now, leaving a trail that any fool could recognize as that of a firebender, let alone a trained law enforcer in Ba Sing Se. But she has no choice, her chest heaving, her limbs turning heavy with exhaustion, a painful stitch in her side that burns with a fire she can't control. She doesn't have enough time or energy for elegance any more, she just has to get _away._

The Inner Wall looms larger, blocking out the dim stars. The full moon is behind her now, she can feel the chill of it’s cold light pressing down on her skin, choking the fire in her blood, but she doesn’t allow her steps to falter. _Death takes the slow_ , Saw bellows, his eyes burning brighter than any flame Jyn has ever called, and she hates him and she misses him and she would give more than she will admit to have him at her side now, facing this terrifying stranger and his icy competence.

Saw is not at her side, though, and wishes won’t save her from the waterbender’s pursuit. She doesn't even have the paired jian her mentor once gifted her, one sword lost on the field where he abandoned her, one hidden in her rented room and out of reach. She has nothing to rely on but her will and her fire. So Jyn shakes away the fantasy and the memories and forces her aching legs to run faster. _Run, run, almost there_. Her lungs burn with equal parts fire and pain now, weariness dimming her blood and the cold moon squeezing the air from her chest.

But she will not be taken, so Jyn grits her teeth and runs.

There – the Ochre Steps, little better than a slum, where clay buildings pile haphazardly on top of one another at the base of the great city Wall. The dirt on these streets is less packed, mud and loose dirt mixed with patches of smooth pebbles and rough gravel that roll and slip under foot. The buildings are closer together, their many different colors muted in the weak torchlight mixed with moonlight. No glittering crystal lamps here, no small crowds of concerned locals. If anyone hears the battle raging outside in the Ochre Steps, they are more likely to lock their doors then open them to peer out.

It’s the best security Jyn has. It’s why she dared to rent a small, crumbling room here in the first place, and why she dared to rig her trap next to it. A last resort, something she once made regularly for Saw and his band of rebels, and now only sets up when she is forced to stay in one place longer than a night. A flashmine, a trap consisting of a jug of oil mixed with a few other liquids that burn with a terrible clinging flame when ignited, buried loosely under a few sheets of thin, carefully punctured scrap metal. She has set it up on the roof just over her room, and all she has to do is get him to step on it. The moment his weight breaks the oil jug, the spark-maker inside the rim of the jug will catch, and…

Jyn’s stomach curdles inside her, but she grits her teeth against the nausea and takes in another deep breath just to feel the pain of it wheezing through her chest.

The clinging oil will catch, and the stranger with cold eyes will no longer pursue her, ever again.

She will not be taken. Even if she has to kill to ensure it.

Behind her, the waterbender leaps down from the rooftops and lands with a splash in the street. Jyn throws one last look over her shoulder. Damn, no good, she had hoped he would go back up to the rooftops he clearly favors. If she’d been really lucky, he would have leaped onto the flashmine while she was still down on the streets, and she would at least be spared the sight of his death. She will have to deal with the body either way, of course, but she doesn’t want to watch him die.

That’s a strange thought, but she is saved from having to examine it when a nearby gutter bursts and the filthy water twists in her direction, clubbing at her knees. Jyn leaps, clears the blow, and lands nearly on her own doorstep. Now for the hard part. He’s close behind her, but she still has at least one more trick. Jyn runs at her ramshackle apartment building, but instead of bursting through the door and inside, when she reaches the foot of the wall she leaps _up_ and breathes _out_ , fire bursting from her feet in one last rush of energy, the force of it great enough to scorch the earth beneath her and propel her in a powerful rush up the side of the clay building. She catches the rusty metal railing of a second story balcony, breathes in, out, _push_ , and she’s flying again, straight up and then landing with a jarring, graceless crash on the cracked lip of the building’s rooftop. This is not a steep, traditional curved roof; no decorative crystals glint from the peaked edges of this old, cheap rectangle of clay. That makes it ideal for Jyn’s last resort.

A crackle of ice forming on the rooftop edge across from her, a frozen ramp of some kind that allows the waterbender to run up nearly as fast as she had flown, damn him, damn his moon, (damn them all for chasing her all her life), but no time to feel sorry for herself because there he is, only a few steps away.

He balances on the edge, and Jyn’s exhausted mind notes with somewhat hysterical amusement and despair that his pose is now a near-perfect mirror of her own, perched on the narrow ledge, staring at her. His chest is heaving with exertion, she is at least gratified to note, though he doesn’t look nearly as run-down as she feels.

What she wouldn't give for her jian right now. But it is tucked away under her rickety rented bed three floors below her, and no use to her. She's done. Spent. Burned out.

“Jyn Erso,” the waterbender says, and the hysteria almost bursts out of her lungs in unhinged laughter as he speaks her name, her real name. He doesn’t snarl, or gloat; he doesn’t even have the decency to sneer as he calls her by a name she hasn’t heard spoken aloud since she was eight years old. In fact, he sounds almost…admiring. And sad. Resigned, perhaps. Wait, what is she thinking? Resigned? _Hah_. Wonderful. She’s tired, her lungs aching, her fire guttering out inside her, and now she's hallucinating. Burned out. She should have fought harder to leave this city while she still could.

How _dare_ he speak her name like that. How dare he admire her, when he means to crush her in the darkness. How dare he look at her like he knows her, when he can’t possibly know anything about her save her name and the fire that burns in her hands.

The thin metal sheets that hide her trap are between them.

She just has to get him to walk forward a few more steps.

She raises her hand, and crooks a finger shaking with exhaustion at him. _Come on, then. Come and claim me._

His mouth sets. His shoulders square. Resignation, perhaps she wasn't hallucinating that part. Steeling himself for something unpleasant. Well. He can join the club.

He steps off the ridge, down to the rooftop proper.

( _Please,_ his expression had said to her, wordless as he looked at the innocent civilians who would step between him and his target. _Please, don’t._ )

“Jyn Erso,” he says again ( _I am sorry, child_ , Saw shakes his head and presses his rough hand against her wet cheek, _I am sorry, but we cannot spare our enemies)._

Another step, his foot brushing the edge of the thin sheet metal. ( _We cannot spare our enemies, Jyn. We cannot afford such mercy when they would show none to us.)_

“I need you to come with me,” he says. His jaw tightens, any hint of gentleness she might have imagined a moment ago frozen now behind an impassive wall. “You _will_ come with me.”

( _We cannot spare our enemies_.)

She will not be taken.

_(They must burn.)_

“Wait,” Jyn snaps, as he lifts his foot and begins to step forward onto the metal. “ _Wait._ ”

He startles at the harsh whip of her tone, steps back in surprise. The metal clatters to the side, disturbed by his boot, and he glances down automatically. So does Jyn, though she doesn’t want to.

The oil jug is gone.

Jyn has just enough time to think _what?_ And then _behind!_

Something heavy slams into her back, sending her flying forward, the world tumbling and scraping at her flailing limbs as she rolls.

Cold, wet, _ice,_ spiking around her body, trapped, she’s trapped, _she’s trapped!_

“ – still! Be still! Don’t make me knock you out, I will, but please, just be still – “

The voice in her ear breaks through the panic, and Jyn glares at the waterbender as he raises his hands and finishes locking her into this smothering cage of ice. Over his shoulder, the moon shines like a beacon, and the ice forms around her body faster than she could ever hope to burn through it, even at her best.

Behind the waterbender, a tall dark-skinned man with a shaved head wearing the red and black robes of a Fire Temple Acolyte holds a heavy metal bar in one hand and a familiar oil jug in the other. “Clinging flame mine,” he is saying in a fussy, precise voice, holding up the oil jug for the waterbender to see. “She had it hidden under that metal you nearly stepped on. The oil is designed to sink into your skin and burn no matter how much water you dump on it. I told you she would be more dangerous than you anticipated.”

Fire Temple priest, Jyn thinks fuzzily, her back throbbing from the blow (iron bar, he hit her with an iron bar, that ash-sucking treacherous _bastard_ ), a Fire Temple priest would know about clinging fire, that makes sense.

Fire Temple priest with a waterbender, chasing a fugitive through Ba Sing Se. Not so much sense.

The waterbender stares at her, standing straight and still again, and with his back to the moon she can barely see his face at all. She wonders what he’s thinking of her now. Angry that she tried to kill him in a vicious, painful way? Surprised that she tried to save him from her own trap at the last possible moment? Nothing more than satisfaction that he has triumphed over his prey?

That last thought nearly breaks her, the anger giving way at last to overwhelming exhaustion, her limbs shivering inside her frozen cage, her lungs aching but unable to draw a proper breath. Prey. That’s all she has become, in the end. Some stranger’s trophy, to do with as he will.

“What do you want,” she whispers hoarsely, proud that at least she does not sound as terrified as she feels (she hopes).

“I – “ the waterbender shakes his head. “You will come with me. You have information my people need.”

“Your _people?_ ” she demands. “The southern water tribes?”

It’s her last shot in the dark, this wild guess about his origins, but if this shot lands, he doesn’t show it. “No,” he replies, voice flat. “The Alliance of the White Lotus.”

“Oh,” says Jyn, any last shreds of anger or defiance stunned by the sheer insanity of this situation. "Shit."

And then the darkness surges up, and claims her.

**Author's Note:**

> \- I put a hint to this story’s timeline in here, but for those who missed it, this is set just before the beginning of the original Avatar The Last Airbender series begins.  
> \- I invented all the districts and shops mentioned in this story, except for the Inner Wall, Outer Wall, the class-divided Rings, and the Agrarian Zone.  
> \- The ‘green uniformed men’ who wore no official badge but were obeyed without question are an oblique reference to the Dai Li, Ba Sing Se’s secret police.  
> \- A [bonguk geom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonguk_geom) is a Korean two-edged, blunt tip sword (“geom” means “sword”).  
> \- A [jian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jian) is just the Chinese word for “sword” because I couldn’t decide what kind of short sword Jyn would carry in this world, so I went a bit generic with it. She’s not carrying her last _jian_ around Ba Sing Se, though, if that wasn’t obvious.  
> \- A [hammerstone](https://www.thoughtco.com/hammerstone-simplest-and-oldest-stone-tool-171237) is thought to be the first tool, a stone specifically shaped to be used in building, shaping, or creating.  
> \- [Yuja Cha](https://www.chopstickchronicles.com/yuzu-cha-japanese-citrus-tea/) is a type of yuzu flavored citrus tea in Korea, a bit tart, utterly delicious.  
> \- Traditional [Korean architecture](https://www.ancient.eu/Korean_Architecture/) has peaked roofs with curved ends, which are somewhat difficult to run across without being seen.  
> \- Korean (and by association, probably not Earth Kingdom) women didn’t really wear scarfs or veils the way Jyn wears her (movie canon) scarf here, [though they had one or two things](https://www.thewordcracker.com/en-us/womens-hats-in-joseon-dynasty-korean-traditional-clothing/) that were almost similar. I went with the scarf anyway, because it was easier.


End file.
